Monday, 23 March 2015

So you’re almost to the end,
and you’re thinking, “Soon all this will be over!” Hah!
You forgot the rewrites, you silly writer-creatures you! Give yourselves a moment to sag in despair
once you’ve finished your completion-of-first-draft celebrations, but don’t
stay in despair.

Believe it or not, a lot of
us prefer rewrites to initial drafts. My
friend and writing buddy, Young Reader writer Bruce Coville, likes them so much
he does thirteen of them. Thirteen,
could you just die? I stop at
three, max, and I only go to three when it’s the first book in a new series and
I’m creating a new setting and a new cast of characters. Rewrites mean you already have something on
paper. You may cut; you may insert; you
may combine characters or insert new ones who force you to revise how the rest
of them behave for the remainder of the book, but at least you have something
to work with.

Bruce, I’ve found, is also
one of those non-linear writers. He will
chug along, find something new and interesting, and go back and insert it from
the very beginning, which generates a new draft. If his old one gets too messy, he stops where
he is, enters the changes, and continues writing with the clean copy. So he doesn’t write thirteen drafts,
exactly. They’re more like thirteen
partial drafts. He also works with two
other book groups and compares the commentary he gets, as well as with his wife,
Young Adult writer Kathy Coville.

My own process has changed
over the years. There was a happier
time, when I had more leisure to work, when a single draft meant that, once I
wrote it, I would print it out and go over it by hand, making revisions. Then, if I had the chance, I would read it
aloud. You catch so many more things
you want to fix by reading on paper what you had on a screen (or vice versa),
and the same is true of reading aloud. I
regarded the manuscript that resulted from hand corrections and reading aloud
as a single draft. These days I read
manuscript aloud with Bruce, which not only gives me the chance to make
corrections of my own, but also allows me to incorporates his feedback as well
(I do the same for him). Another friend, Young Adult and adult writer Sarah
Beth Durst, doesn’t do overall rewrites (she says they’re too
overwhelming). Instead she rewrites the
plot, then the setting, then one character, then another, then others that are
important, and things like dialog, and so on.

As you can tell, the
rewriting process is every bit as idiosyncratic as the writing process. Everyone has to work out how s/he/they will
pursue it. You have to shape it to work
for you. Bruce has tried for years to
get me to a book group, but I’m too shy.
(I know, you’re surprised, right?)
I won’t even do it online. He
realized just how hard it was for me to let another writer around my raw
manuscript when it took me four months to agree to read with him. I have always been a solitary writer; it took
a lot of trust for me to read with my friend.
Not everyone can relax that much, or has a friend they trust that much.

And first you have to decide when
to rewrite. I recommend that you leave
the manuscript be for at least a week, so you’ll have time to catch your breath
before you dive back in. Keep in mind,
when you go back, that you are always going to be your worst critic. You are going to hate what you see when you return
to the work. Just grind your teeth and
tell yourself that the thing that made you write this in the first place knows
better than you do if it’s any good or not, and get to work on those
rewrites. Decide how many is enough and
send that manuscript out—you can always rewrite it some more if it comes back
to you a couple of times, or if a publisher asks you to. ;-)

Whatever else, just keep
writing!

About the Author

New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling writer Tamora
Pierce has written 29 books of fantasy for teenagers, a short story collection,
an original audio book, radio plays, comic books, and articles. Her books have been translated into many
different languages and are available on audio. Her works have been ALA Best
Books for Young Adults, YALSA Best Books, and NY Public Library Books for the
Teen Age. She was also named the 2013 Margaret
A. Edwards Award winner for her Song of
the Lioness and Protector of the
Small quartets. She lives with her
Spouse-Creature, two parakeets, and many indoor and outdoor cats in Syracuse
New York. Visit Tamora Pierce’s Webpage at www.tamorapierce.com

Tamora,Thank you for joining and candidly describing your revision process and that of a few friends. It is very helpful to know the the revising is as idiosyncratic a process as our writing. I LOVE all your books.

It's somehow comforting to know that even an accomplished author like Tamora has her insecurities. (It doesn't help me get the umpteenth draft completed but it does make me feel a teensy bit better about it.) :-)

Thank you for sharing your views on the editing process! I cannot believe that Bruce does it 13 times!! Such patience is a gift! I love to read my scripts aloud especially to my grandson. I randomly stop and correct myself and Anthony says, " Nonni read it to me when you're all done please!" (LOL)

So thrilled to get advice from my author-hero. I re-read The Protector of the Small whenever I am ill or in need of inspiration/heartening, and I re-read the others at least once a year (and have been reading them since I was a teen myself).

I love the acknowledgement that everyone has a different process and this was a lovely bit of insight.

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